•Revenue from student fees increased by 17 per cent during the year compared to 2021.
•The overall revenue generated by our two main revenue streams namely training and Utalii hotel grew by 25 per cent during 2022 compared to 2021.
Kenya Utalii College (KUC) is a leading African hospitality and tourism training institution. The College opened its doors 47 years ago and has trained over 60,000 graduates from around the world, who continue to serve in the local and international hospitality and tourism industry. The Star spoke to the Principal and CEO PROF. CHARLES MUSYOKI on transforming the institution.
It is one year now since you took over leadership at the institution, how has it been?
There is no greater calling than to train young people. I therefore must thank God for the grace and for the accomplishments made. It is never easy to serve as head of an institution in which public interest is impatient in seeing change. But we are getting there one day at a time. As the Americans put it, if you can rake in a number of significant achievements in your first 100 days, then everything else is going be smooth. Early success breeds success.
What do you consider the key milestones so far?
My team and I were able to carry out a number of activities that were geared towards transforming Kenya Utalii College to make it great again. At the beginning of last year, the road leading to the College was completely dilapidated. Today it is one of the best roads in the city.There was no signage to guide visitors to the college from Thika Super Highway. Visitors are currently well guided to our facilities. The college had a biting shortage of water and it was a huge inconvenience for staff, students and guests. We now have sufficient water. This was possible because we rehabilitated a borehole that had been dysfunctional for years. Not only do we have sufficient water but the water is now also safe for human consumption because we were able to refurbish our purification plant that was dysfunctional for eight years. We are currently able to purify 400 liters of water per hour. This means we will significantly reduce the cost of purchasing drinking water. From a business angle, the year saw us refurbish and rebrand our outside catering truck that is now doing business. We also refurbished two laundry-cleaning machines and we equipped the laundry with power surge protectors. We can now service large volumes of laundry. All this was possible without us asking for additional financial support. We managed to do more with less in line with the principles of the Kenya Kwanza Administration that we serve.
Any policies put in place?
Yes. In June last year, we finalised and launched the college’s five years Strategic Plan that provides a clear roadmap for the transformation of Kenya Utalii College. The three pillars of the Strategic Plan namely: Training, Partnerships and Enterprise set the college on a clear transformation trajectory. We have also prepared and finalised the college human resource instruments. These are an organisation structure, staff establishment, career progression guidelines and a human resource policy guidelines manual. During the year that has just ended, we also managed to harmonise staff salaries thereby bringing to rest a matter that was affecting staff morale and productivity. Last year also saw us complete stakeholder consultations for the review of the curricula for our training programmes.
How is Utalii doing in terms of revenue?
We grew revenue generation during last year compared to the year before. Revenue from Utalii hotel increased by 33 per cent during 2022 compared to 2021. Revenue from student fees increased by 17 per cent during the year compared to 2021. The overall revenue generated by our two main revenue streams namely training and Utalii hotel grew by 25 per cent during 2022 compared to 2021. Revenue from food sales increased by 37%, beverage sales increased by 108%, income from the laundry increased by 29%, income from the swimming pool increased by 150%, while income from the health club (gym) went from zero to Sh3.7 million.
What do you attribute these accomplishments to?
Teamwork, commitment, technology and culture change have been instrumental. From March 1, 2022, we transitioned to a cashless payment platform. All financial transactions at the Utalii hotel and payments to all staff are currently carried out on cashless platforms. This shift had a huge effect on internal business processes. Management introduced team-building structures that were useful in focusing staff to work towards attainment of the corporate vision. It is now a practice that Tuesday of every week senior management meets to deliberate and make decisions. Directorates, divisions, departments and sections hold weekly meeting that feed into the senior management meetings. Quarterly general staff meetings were introduced where the Principal and Chief Executive Officer engages staff on the corporate direction, policy issues and emerging matters. A Friday tea forum where the Principal and Chief Executive Officer takes tea with staff every week and also engages with them on topical issues was introduced. Students are also engaged every quarter to discuss academic, training and welfare matters. External resource persons were invited to speak to staff on various employee wellness matters such as personal development, personal finance management, mental health issues, succession issues,etc.
Do you see Kenya Utalii college regaining its glory?
Yes. We eliminated all the barriers that lay in the way of this. We have prepared the foundation for the transformation. All internal issues that negated growth and constrained progress were neutralised. Every member of staff now focuses on attainment of our vision. We costed all our products and services to enable us make educated entrepreneurial decisions. We have put in place cost-cutting, avoidance of waste and expenditure controls that do not compromise service delivery. We put many of our staff through training and capacity building to equip them with new skills and to sharpen their skills to enable them better discharge their responsibilities. We have a very supportive government environment through the Kenya Kwanza Plan. It is all systems go. There can be no reason at all why Kenya Utalii College should not transform into a global center of excellence in hospitality and tourism training in the next 1-2 years.
What are your next plans?
We commenced the process of developing a business plan for Utalii Hotel. We will complete this plan in the next three months and begin work towards making Utalii Hotel Five Star again. We will install a newlift at Utalii Hotel. A new lift for Utalii Hotel will be the greatest milestone yet in the transformation journey.We will finalise the review of the curricula over the next five months.This will enable us ensure that every student gets the highest quality instruction every day through improvement of the quality of teaching and the quality of learning as well as aligning our curricula to the guidelines of the Ministry of Education through TVETA and KNQA. We are working to make Kenya Utalii College financially sustainable through optimisation of all our existing revenue streams and identification of new revenue streams. We have a huge potential for growing our revenue. Our processes are not fully automated. In line with the Kenya Kwanza plan, we will automate all our processes during this year. Repositioning the Kenya Utalii College brand during this year is a top priority as we gravitate to making it great again. Our marketing function has not been very strong. We will strengthen marketing and move marketing of our products and services to digital platforms where all the consumers are. Student hostels were constructed forty-eight years ago. We will refurbish the student hostels to give them a facelift. We would also like to open the students center for the welfare of our students. Student numbers are a good indicator of the growth of an institution like ours. We plan to double student numbers over the next two years by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by technologies for offsite and online training. This will enable us give more opportunities to Kenyans to acquire skills in hospitality and tourism.
Do you have any regrets about the year that ended?
Yes indeed. I really intended to have an engagement with the Kenya Utalii College Alumni Association. This was regrettably not possible.I am prioritising this early in this year by strategically involving our alumni to develop viable avenues for successful activities that would support the college vision to be a dynamic, inclusive, and competitive centre for excellence. I am optimistic that the alumni association will be instrumental in the enhancement and improvement of the intellectual and material well being of the college.